Giuseppe Legname

Giuseppe Legname earned his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. After a long spell in industry in the field of immunotherapy, he moved to the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Medical Research Council in London, UK as a Research Associate. In 1999 he became Assistant Adjunct Professor, and later Associate Adjunct Professor, at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IND), University of California at San Francisco, USA, under the direction of 1997 Nobel Laureate Professor Stanley B. Prusiner.

Since then he has been involved in basic research projects in the field of Prion Biology and Disease. In 2006 he joined the faculty of SISSA in Trieste as Associate Professor at the Department of Neuroscience. Currently he is the Coordinator of the PhD Program in Functional and Structural Genomics at SISSA and member-elect of the Academic Senate. He is a reviewer for several International journals, academic editor for PLoS ONE and co-author of various patents.

The main focus of his research program is the physiological function of the prion protein in mammals and the mechanisms of prion replication as well as the structural characterization of molecular determinants for prion infectivity.